278 comments:

She is exactly right about that and someone like John McCain needs to step up and kick their pitiful little asses. If he won't do it, Sarah Palin will have to and damn it, McCain, haven't you already made her suffer enough? Just what goes on in your brain anyway?

She should rip them a new one. These creeps are part of the cabal of hoity-toity media and academics who will try to destroy anyone who is not part of their club. We need some one to go after them and destroy their influence before it is too late!

They already are planning to take our young people away from their families and putting them in re-education camps to indoctrinate them. To force them to perform “community service.” We need to resist with all our might.

Time for Palin to say, "Yeah, they don't have the courage to step out into the light and it to my face. My guess is that they're afraid of strong women. However, I'm bigger than that. I'll be here when they want to come out. Until then, I have no comment. Next."

I thought that I would not find anything about the media coverage of her shocking anymore. But that the media presented that 'she thought Africa was a country, not a continent' tale as if it were at all credible is, itself, almost incredible.

It's worse than that, miller, the worst factoids are still treated as true even AFTER they're proved false. If you haven't already, try to convince somebody who hates her that she's not a creationist or that Wasilla didn't make rape victims pay for rape kits. You will get nowhere, I promise, not even if you stand over them and make them click on the links and read the truth for themselves.

McCain really needs to stand up and say something. Not that Palin needs him to -- she can take care of herself -- but he's got to speak anyway, or else he is not the honorable man I believed him to be.

There are two new hot guys that moved into the loft downstairs in my building. They have some really skinny dog like a whippit or something. I want to do them. I am trying to google them and get some info about them.

Also, the guy that moved in right next to me is a Japanese political expert and works at the American Interprise Institute. He writes for the Wall Street Journal. He is only 30. He is hot too and I would like to do him but he has some Japanese girl hanging around.

It's sad, but the lies about Palin are endlessly repeated by those who are threatened by her. Somehow the fact that she did, indeed, take on the Alaska political establishment and win is overlooked by the snarky comments and conflation of Tina Fey's parody with the real Palin.

Har har it's so funny.

But sad, and a lot of leftists are completely blind to the way people (yes, PEOPLE!) like Hillary and Palin are destroyed by the left.

I don't get it - are leftist women in love with abuse so they can't protest against it?

McCain should have been the first one to repudiate the gossip and to have done so in a highly public manner. He was the first to criticize his allies when they did something he thought untoward so it's only fair he defend his choice for running mate. I'm extremely disappointed in the lack of conviction of someone who obviously posseses the trait in large quantities.

I have always said I find Palin interesting. Don't agree with her politics but I actually kind of like her.

I find what some of the Mccain people are doing is repulsive.

If they feel she was so awful then they should all be looking in the mirror and take responsibility for the choices they made. First and foremost, Mccain, should issue some sort of statement or press announcement.

I also cringed at Mccain's concession speech. Palin was emotional but stoic and he gave her a lame hug and hand shake. He should of embraced that woman with a big hug and thank you.

McCain was a candidate that nobody particularly wanted. He was polling in the single digits before he somehow won in New Hampshire. I am much happier about the outcome of the election than I thought I would be.

Palin was not a good choice for McCain because she proved to be such a lightning rod for controversy, however genuinely conservative and authentically human she may be. I wish her the very best in the future.

Washington Post's Reliable Sources column reports on more Palin clothing expenditures, this time for Todd:

On top of the $150,000 first outlined in Federal Election Commission filings, Palin spent "tens of thousands of dollars" on additional clothing, makeup and jewelry for herself and her family, including $40,000 in luxury goods for her husband, Todd, our colleague Michael Shear reports.

The campaign was charged for silk boxer shorts, spray tanners and 13 suitcases to carry all the designer clothes, according to two GOP insiders.

I wonder what it is like to live in New Orleans now after Katrina. I have a friend that I worked with here in NYC and he ended up moving back there last year because his mom had a stroke. He lived in NYC for 20 years and moved back. I wonder what his life is now down there. I should call him.

Since I stopped watching TV news or reading any mainstream newspapers or their online stories, it hardly seems to matter.

They're all fighting over a dwindling audience and now that BHO no longer needs them they'll actually have to report to get readers, or just chuck it all and become daily versions of People magazine.

I bet on the latter.

P.S. Don't feed the Michael troll. He bites and leaves his detritus all over the place. I just see blah blah blah whenever his name pops up. Reminds me of the guy in that old SNL skit "The Thing That Wouldn't Leave."

What sealed the deal for me was working for a living and seeing all that money sucked out of my paycheck by bloated governments that treated my opinion with contempt. I voted (R) ever since I started earning a living.

Maybe if I was living off the government teat I might consider the benefits of the (D) team.

This is me, too. Thus, we see that the Republican party is the party of the middle class and small business. I know many rich people. They are almost all Democrats. My parents were poor and voted Democratic.

Anyway, you can't win them all no matter what, and the current Republican leadership had it coming. I would much rather have had Hillary Clinton, because she is such a known and more centrist commodity.

What? The Rs are taking part in the politics of personal destruction? And, they used Fox to disseminate their attacks?

Say it ain't so.

Not so much fun when it's intraparty, is it.

P.S.When the receipts are reimbursed, and the RNC books are made public, will this be as phony as Michelle's Iranian caviar, or her whitey comment, or the letter "B" lady, or at least another dozen lies spread by the right wing media?

Time will tell.

P.P.S. Palin tells us that the attorneys aren't going to her house to look in her closets.

This still leaves a lot of room for RNC folks to audit her clothing stash, assuming that the stash is anywhere in Alaska other than her house. And, for the record, she was not answering a question about her house, even though her answer pretended that she was. I would assume that she didn't want to acknowledge that the RNC is in Alaska to take back her new duds.

We are told by anonymous McCain staffers that there are receipts for silk underwear. What are they going to do if the RNC auditors can't find these underwear in the non-Palin-house parts of Alaska.

Or, worse what if they do find them: will they be clean?

It's pretty bad when some in the McCain campaign are literally talking about Palin's dirty laundry.

Take 1jpb, just for example. This commenter has an ax to grind, and seems to bring the latest breaking news this is going to sink the dastardly conservatives for sure news of the day entirely too often, which is really annoying because nobody gives a shit about 90 percent of it.

All of that said, 1jpb is calm and reasonable and engaging. Take note, tool.

Donn -- I don't know what Cedarford's deal is. He is always dropping in stuff about Jewish people, and occasionally about black and Hispanic people. Mostly, I ignore him because his posts are too long. I don't like him. But at least he makes a point.

I liken Cedarford to the old-school conservatives of the John Birch variety that William Buckley told to get the hell out.

You've really got to get a life. Seriously, is this the best you can do? Is this fun? Does calling people names, while arguing with them, demonstrate anything but immaturity. Commenters like Seven have been dealing with trolls like you for a long time and you're going to have to step up your game.

Well, Seven Machos, the difference between ijpb and "Michael" is the difference between an annoying silly person with dumb ideas and a troll. This thread provides a clear illustration of the difference between the two types of commenters. I remember that not long ago, I was assailed by Beth and others for having the temerity to call "Michael" a troll, and was accused of simply labeling it that because I didn't "agree" with it. But "Michael's" subsequent history on this site vindicates my initial assessment. This is classical troll behavior. Everyone says "well if you don't like it, ignore it" but you can see by this thread that that strategy is impossible with a determined troll. Blogger doesn't offer any way for commenters or site owners to downmod and hide troll comments. The persistence of the troll and the quantity and incendiary nature of its comments quickly hobbles any attempt at reading or commenting intelligently on the the subject of the blog post that it infects.

For instance, you're reading Althouse and see this post. You decide to add a thoughtful comment on the subject of Sarah Palin and the media. You click through and then you see 50 abusive, sub-literate comments by the troll, and 50 comments by others directed at the troll and you say to yourself "why bother? No one will read my comment in the middle of this shitstorm". Any you'd be right. That's exactly what the troll is trying to do. It's vandalism and assault against the website it chooses to attack and there's nothing Blogger allows the reader or site owner to do about it. The only thing you can do is try to ignore the troll. But, again, that soon becomes impossible because no one else is going to ignore it. So it succeeds and drives away intelligent commenters of all ideological stripes leaving a wreck in its wake.

The persistence of the troll and the quantity and incendiary nature of its comments quickly hobbles any attempt at reading or commenting intelligently on the the subject of the blog post that it infects.

Right - I'm not used to being called a piece of shit. and no matter how much i try to ignore it, its hard.

I'm sure she does. But what can she do? She asked this troll not to ruin her comments section anymore, but of course it's not going to respect her wishes. So here it stays. If everyone completely ignored it, it might go away, though that isn't a certainty. But everyone won't or can't ignore it. And so it goes. This is a good example of why England's strategy of simultaneously disarming both the citizens and their ground-level law enforcement is a complete disaster. Being a commenter and blog-owner at Blogger is like being a Subject of the Crown. You get to watch your comment section's civilization disintegrate and there's nothing you can do about it. Freedom of speech (including commenting on blogs) can't exist without a means with which to defend it against enemies.

From my silly, annoying, and dumb perspective I can't understand why so many of y'all are claiming you dislike Micheal's participation?

As I scan the comments I see that he is responsible for a lot of back and forth chit chat. W/o him a lot of these threads would be seriously boring echo chambers. I think many of you would get bored w/o Michael. I'm assuming that many of you appreciate debate, but this may not be true for all (many?) of you.

This thread, for example, would be a lot more boring w/o Micheal. And, with him many of you get to gang up. He seems to increase your camaraderie.

And, he's so clearly outnumbered, if you get rid of him all you'll have left is your group think in some of these threads. Maybe that's what you like.

"W/o him a lot of these threads would be seriously boring echo chambers."

Reading 1000 comments by someone telling you to "suck their dick" and "eat shit" isn't boring?

"I think many of you would get bored w/o Michael. I'm assuming that many of you appreciate debate, but this may not be true for all (many?) of you."

Again, having someone post 1000 comments slinging false accusations of antisemitism and telling people to "eat shit" and "suck my dick" isn't debate. It's vandalism and abuse and you're just accepting it because it has the effect of silencing your ideological opponents. You're like the shopkeeper who praises the mafia's takeover of your street because "at least they keep the petty criminals out".

ijpb -- No. Palladian is jaw-droppingly correct. I hope that Althouse sees this thread and I will encourage her to do so, as it is a textbook example of ruining.

I come here for a reason: to engage a wide range of opinion, including yours. I don't want a choir of right-wing thought. That's boring. I don't want a flurry of insults. That's boring, too. I want insightful conversation among an ever-changing but intimate group, which is what this place provides at its best, perfectly.

I said something earlier about a vexing inability to engage in reasonable discussion. Something like that. That is a proper threshold, and it's been crosssed by this troll.

Althouse has banned people before. She should ban this guy. It really is a kind of vandalism.

"Every once is a while he comes in and makes somewhat normal left-wing talking points, and is generally nice to people.

At other times he is just like he is tonight."

The reason for this can be found in a quote from "The Exorcist" that I like to trot out when another, smarter, more evil and insidious troll DTL appears:

“He is a liar, the demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological, Damien, and powerful. So don't listen, remember that, do not listen.”

Y'all seem to miss that he's taking some serious incoming. And, he's taking it from a huge number of commentors.

I think he fires back so hard because he's sort-of under siege. Some of y'all write seriously harsh comments about him. And, there's a lot of quick escalation of the heat and dredging up the past animosity.

I'm shocked that he doesn't get tired and move on. He's tenacious, even against a very stacked deck which may leave him a bit frazzled.

"Althouse has banned people before. She should ban this guy. It really is a kind of vandalism."

But I don't think she has the actual technological tools with which to ban commenters, because Blogger doesn't give them to the blog owner. In truth, it's hard to keep a determined troll away, even with IP-based banning though I don't think "Michael" is smart enough to get around those hurdles though so I think if the tools were available, they would be effective in his case.

I believe that Althouse's "bans" primarily consist of telling commenters that they're not welcome and deleting enough of their comments that they decide on their own to go away. That strategy works sometimes but probably won't work on "Michael".

Long ago, Althouse toyed with banning cuss words. But that didn't work because curse words can be fucking poetic in the hands of an artist.

She needs to ban trolling and she needs to define it in some way, even if it's I know when I see it. That standard wouldn't be bad, actually, because it's a standard of community standards, and she could let her core community decide when someone has crossed the line.

I don't mind these one-and-done weirdos who come over from where ever they come from, left and right. I hate the continuous, spam-like meaninglessness that ruins thread after thread after thread.

"That standard wouldn't be bad, actually, because it's a standard of community standards, and she could let her core community decide when someone has crossed the line."

Many community sites have a system of comment rating (like /.) that allow users to upmod or downmod comments and hides comments below a certain rating threshold. This system, like all others seems to have its advantages and disadvantages and probably works for larger communities than this one. But it doesn't matter because as long as Althouse is on Blogger, she doesn't have this or any other options available to her.

Anytime banning is discussed is an opportunity to brag about my history of being banned from myDD and talkleft. These are like battle scars, except that they're completely meaningless, so in fact they're not anything like battle scars, but other than that they're the same.

P.S.A while back I probably would have been banned here too, if it was possible. I've been taken to the woodshed by Althouse.

So, I have real sympathy for Michael.

P.P.S.I'm currently quasi-banned (asked to never comment again) by vbspurs

palladian, you're by far far one of the very least intellectual contributors to this site

1jpb -- Care to defend such a blatantly poor and useless and false argument? No? Okay, now multiply said argument times 25. That's the number of these kinds of comments that this troll fills threads with. No fun to try to ignore. Not worth it.

I lived in Las Vegas for two years and a lot of the old-timers said the town had less crime and was better run when the Mob controlled Vegas.

I was born and raised in Vegas and left there in 1967 after high school to go away to college. It was a much better place in the 50s and 60s. I can't stand to go back there anymore, my own old hometown.

Another thing that makes a troll is a huge trail of poor, crappy posts. I have certainly posted things at Althouse that I wish I hadn't on occasion. Never, however, did I accuse someone of anti-Semitism for a grammatical error and post on and on about it, just for example.

Trolling is a character flaw and, like other character flaws, it is something that only becomes evident over time.

I don't have anything against Palladian. He seems like a fun guy, though he seems to be having a great deal of difficulty accepting Obama's victory, and doesn't seem willing to open his eyes to why that happened (he'll just blame the media). But it's a bit ridiculous for him to be calling for a commenter to be banned over saying "suck my dick" and over throwing around accusations of various ists and isms, when Palladian is known to instantly call you a "sexist" if you say one dispagaing word about Palin, and then will start telling you you are afraid of Palin's "snapping pussy hiding under your bed" or whatever it was.

Also, the Palin fans can spare me about how mean everyone's being to Sarah Palin. This is a candidate who ran around the country basically saying Obama is a fan of terrorists and that some parts of America are not "real America". Obama is not a fan of terrorists, and all of America is America.

That woman who doesn't even know what countries are in NAFTA should go back to Alaska and educate herself if she wants to be on the national stage again. And, after 7-time felon Ted Stevens was re-elected in that state, I'm not =all that impressed that Palin was elected Governor there.

Whatever the case, it is not our fault that the Republicans asked us to vote for such an ignorant, unfit Vice Presidential candidate. We are not "fake" Americans for noticing the truth about her. Thomas Jefferson would no doubt turn in his grave if we had elected her. Our founding fathers were not advocates of electing ignoramuses to high office, and it would be all the more dangerous to do so now that America is a super power at war and in the middle of a economic crisis.

The thing is, I really don't even care what the schnorrer says. It's not even to the level of spam e-mail.

Like, somehow I'm hurt by power words? I don't get it. That's the tactics of a schoolboy, especially a schoolboy who wants to be a bully but doesn't have the physical tools or the mental acuity to fight or fight back.

But the tendentiousness of the argument, and the silly scabrous talk -- it just get tiresome. I don't mind give-and-take between the right and the left, but it's only marginally better than c4's Protocols of the Elders of Zion being dumped out at every chance, like a sort of anti-Semitic Sixth Sense.

No, (s)he's not really a human being - (s)he'd not pass a Turing test for rationality.

I realize it's difficult to admit publicly that a politician you voted for turned out to be a dunce. I've been there! I voted for Bush. I still think I can sorta make a case for voting for Bush's re-election, because Kerry was such a crap candidate who would've done great harm in Iraq IMHO. Also, if we had elected Kerry, we would've have this historic moment with Obama this week.

I may have been one of the last peopel to realize what an incompetent and rotten president Bush is, but when I did realize it I said so! I know some of you must be disappointed at how Palin turned out, but you don't wanna admit it. Aren't you a little bit too attached to a politician if you're unwilling to admit that politician's massive failings when you see them in practice? If Palin had wanted to be a serious national-level candidate, she probably should've done what Althouse mentioned on bloggingheads, and what I mentioned in these comments many weeks before her: Prepped for the national stage and then entered the GOP primaries. Maybe then she would've, like, looked up what countries are in NAFTA......

I grew up in a little post-WWII tract home subdivsion called Hyde Park, near the intersection of Alta and Decatur, and went to Western High School, if you remember where that all was. That area you lived in was way out in the middle of the bare desert when I left.

Michael had never heard of "kiking". He had no idea it was a slur or anything. He had to go look it up in the "urban dictionary" and then he *cut and paste* the definition into his comment, word for word. He didn't even restate it using different language.

(I'm still trying to figure out how going to a deli to eat "yummy treats" is a slur... but there you go.)

This troll feeds on the new guys here. Someone fairly new will think the tool is a rational being capable of intelligent conversation and respond. Before they realize that the meatsack is indeed a troll they are hooked like a Crappie on 20 pound test line. Now if you don't actually address the tool it's cool, but do not respond to it directly. It lies, it whines, it cries, but in the end it will leave.

Also, if we had elected Kerry, we WOULDN'T have this historic moment with Obama this week, I meant.

Oh can't some of these right-wingers concede that it really does mean something that we have the first black prez? Everywhere I go this week, people are excited and happy about this, above and beyond partisan politics. But then I check on these comments and it's just such angry, unhappy people. Okay, you don't like that a Democrat is in the White House. I thought some of you understood it's not the end of the frickin' world when the other party wins an election. Conservatives actually got some significant accomplishments done while Clinton was Prez! Things they wouldn't have gotten done with a Republican prez (such as welfare reform).

Oaf -- I think that at least half of what you suggest in your criticism of Palin is false, and the other half is innuendo. We don't know what kind of national politician she is because hasn't been one. By all accounts, she is a dynamite campaigner and a very popular governor.

All of that said, you are right that she was a bad pick because she was a lightning rod for criticism. More importantly, though, McCain was a bad candidate. What did he stand for, other than his McCain-ness. Here we have a man, just for example, who admitted that he knows very little about economics yet rushed off to Washington in the midst of his campaign to "solve" a liquidity crisis.

That's exactly right, Seven. And I think she only really became a lightning rod because she was a real perceived threat - by Obama's camp and the media. I think it is quite a badge of honor for her that she withstood such an onslaught.

And I do think a savvy campaign could have handled that. They just got caught generally flat footed on everything. There's only one person to blame for that.

This is another one of those things that truly begs the question of just who is the most uninformed and gullible. "That woman" is closely involved in trade issues and most certainly knows what countries are in NAFTA and other pertinent information because that's her JOB as a governor of a state that exports oil and imports everything, including oil. This is part of the "experience" of being a governor no one was interested in hearing about.

And, after 7-time felon Ted Stevens was re-elected in that state, I'm not =all that impressed that Palin was elected Governor there.

Well, what can you do... Murtha got re-elected again, too. Ted Kennedy spent his whole life being reelected. And I think I heard that Joe Biden was elected as VP and Senator at the same time? (Would Loooove to see him try to serve in both capacities.) But the deal is this... voters aren't voting on Biden or Stevens, assuming Biden gets to be VP or Stevens gets sent to jail... they're voting to hold the spot for a political appointment. Depending on the state constitution, most of the time it's an appointment by the Governor and maybe with approval of some sort from the state legislature.

On the off chance that Stevens doesn't get tossed in jail or in the case of Murtha and Kennedy and any number of other fossils, local voters have to chose between someone with the power that comes from seniority, or voting in someone new that will be hamstrung by being a junior member of an obscure committee.

Voters chose to ignore idiocy and severe lacks of ethics *all the time* in favor of keeping the person who has enough influence to "make a difference."

I'm reading through the comment thread and you guys are messing around and seeming to be having fun just making stuff up that makes no sense at all... and Michael comes with the silly eat "yummy treats" as a definition of "kiking." I know what "kike" is, but turning it into a verb does not make linguistic sense to me, nor contextual sense from what I'd been reading, I mean, how did "act like a jew" fit? It didn't. And to say that eating "yummy treats" is similar to the term "jewing" which I understand to be normally used as "jewing you down" so you end up with an unfair and bad deal on something being bought or sold... well, that was just stupid. (And I still think it is... I mean... eating yummy treats... wow... how nasty can you get?)

So I thought I'd look it up... typed "Urban Dictionary" in my google search and, Shazam, there it was... and exactly the same words as Michael used.

Cut. And. Paste.

He's going on about how *everyone* knows this is a slur against jewish people and not possibly meant to mean anything else or anything innocent and... he had to look it up. Because he didn't know.

She's got a long way until 2012, so she's got to keep herself in the news somehow. I've heard Palin maniacs suggesting she should write a book (about what, who knows), as this would keep her in the news.

Also, her fans don't want her to run for senate, because they want to keep her away from Washington and all the insiders she spoke so negatively of. Americans don't like people associated with Washington, they say. But, ha ha, the person who just won the presidency was...a senator.

And yet... Governors are more likely to become president than Senators. If you were actually on her side and actually wanted to see her run for President and win, would you really think she'd be better off as a Senator in D.C.?

And for all you hangers-on who still think Palin is the future of your part, how do you come to grips with her national approval ratings? It went from, what, 60% approval to 30% in the nine weeks she campaigned?

It's a tough pill to swallow, but the majority of the country rejected her. And yet, whatever is left of the fringe base of the Republican party continues. This Palin hysteria, this need to have a person "just like me" in the White House, it is really so fucking narcissistic and selfish. It's embarrassing, really.

Regarding senators, it's oratorical. Senators can't seem to get elected is simply because they tend to speak in the jargon and minutiae of legislation ("I voted for it before I voted against it") instead of the policy-oriented action-speak that governors have. Don't you find it interesting that Obama hasn't been in the Senate very long and didn't seem to spend much time there? Wasn't the last senator to get elected from the Senate Kennedy (also young and untainted by that body)?